Hyper-blog

Error 404: Page Not Found

8 Interesting Facts About Cars & Driving

Cars have a rich and interesting history. Even with modern day vehicles, there’s still a lot that people don’t know. Find out some interesting facts below!

1. Despite how cool and high-tech dashboards are getting, they date back to some of the earliest days in driving history. They were actually just wooden boards that were placed in front of a carriage. They would block the liquids and mud that horses would kick up into the area people sat.

2. Texting and driving is still legal in some states. Can you believe that? Texting while driving makes a crash 23x more likely to happen. In 2011, over 3,000 people were killed in distracted driver accidents, with 387,000 more being injured.

3. Everyday people make up the test driving population. So even you could have the chance to drive that hot new car before anyone else. Often times, car companies need to get opinions from the general population to improve the cars and get advice before they hit the market.

4. Truck drivers spend about 105,000 miles per year on the road. The rest of America? Anywhere from 8 – 18,000 miles per year. Imagine spending 5x to 10x the amount of time in the car that you usually do. It better be comfortable.

5. The highest speed ever reached on the German Autobahn was 268.8 mph. It was done by a Mercedes-Benz W125 in 1938! It was a real race car, making the fastest everyday car to hit the Autobahn a Porsche 9ff GTurbo850. It was certainly modded, but clocked in at 236 MPH in 2010.

6. Your car most likely has a “black box” in it, which means that it records certain driving data, like speed. Kind of scary right? You might be thinking, “Nothing is private anymore!” But the black box is mostly used after a car accident. It helps determine how the event happened. This helps police in the law process, and helps automakers increase vehicle safety.

7. The most expensive car ever sold at an auction was a 1954 Mercedes Benz Formula One race car. It sold for 29.6 million dollars. The vehicle won two different Formula One races in its historic run.

8. The first automobile was not the Model T Ford. The first automobile was actually built more than 200 years prior, by a man named Ferdinand Verbiest. The car was steam powered and couldn’t hold a driver. There were other cars made after it that could hold drivers, still before the Model T was made.